Fantino, Elsa

What brought a young French women like me to knives and ironwork?Is it my childhood in a remote place of France, spending days in the woods with my pony and a knife, or because I was the lonely reader of too many adventure books? Is it because I found it to deadly boring to go to university or because I was seriously preferring the fishes to the tourists I was teaching scuba diving to? I always carried utility knives, I bought a Vendetta at 7 and it sure was a great companion when I used to hitch hick! What really got me was the sound of metal. I discovered practicing medieval sword fighting in a theater stunt company. Then I wanted more: more of the sound, more the feeling of the steel in my hand, I climbed a mountain, found an old cranky master and drop everything to dedicate my life to the art of forging. I was 22; it is more than 10 years ago now.I learned knivemaking all around workshops in France for a couple of years, and then I found an apprenticeship in wrought ironwork because forging was my call. I learned, and then I traveled the world for a very high hand French company, designing and installing gates and balustrades in palaces. I went to art school, and worked with some of the greatest interior designers. I learned how to find freedom of creation in restrictions of material needs, and that taught me a lot about knife designing. Meanwhile I built my workshop for when I would be ready, and I learned about myself on the mat. I won some titles in yoseikan budo, and then fought in kick boxing, I worked a lot in the USA where I seriously practiced MMA. When I got a national French title I thought I was ready to learn how to fight with a knife, I encountered Fred Perrin and started working with him. It took all that for me to dare showing my production. I want my knives practical and functional. For outdoors living or urban environment, for everyday carry, or for self defense, whatever the purpose of use they have to meet the needs. I forge a lot a second hand steel, for it has been the use in the smith trade for a long time when metal was rare. Car spring steal, old agricultural tools (carbon steel 5160, 1095, 1075), cables and chains for Damascus. I like to do with what I found, and I also like the different sections it comes into, allowing the use of wrought ironwork techniques. Very often I just try to underline the strong beauty of the steel itself, I like bare metal like a solemn landscape, temper lines like horizon, rainbows in titanium, I try to make elegant but efficient tools, and my style is what I call tactical chic.